


Cardinal Lines

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:40:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1301893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being caged in Storybrooke had been a harder transition than Killian had anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cardinal Lines

_The North Star_ , she tells him one night while on patrol.  _Polaris_.

It’s the first celestial body he can name in this strange land; a burning spot in the inky Maine night as they lay on the ice, shoulders touching, gloved hands clumsily joined.

She laughs when he joyfully points it out to her.

Being caged in Storybrooke has been a harder transition than he had anticipated, with little knowledge of this world and limited means of transport, the feeling of being landlocked and trapped has taken him by surprise.

He had not known the ache that would form in his chest when he looked up to unfamiliar skies, foreign stars looking back. Liam had taught him the heavenly bodies, drawing meticulous sketches on scraps of found parchment, and it feels like a profound loss to have Liam’s legacy ripped from him.

“The North Star doesn’t move,” she says to him now. Her hair is a golden crown beneath her cap, and her skin is milky against her pink lips and the frozen lake. “Or, well, the sky just barely moves around it. I don’t remember seventh grade science that well.”

He can feel her gaze from the corner of his eye, and she assessing him, carefully making sure he doesn’t shatter and crack like the creaking ice beneath them. For all of the saving she claims he’s done -  _‘Face it, buddy, you’re a hero.’_  - she’s the one who has repaired his fractures.

“Sailors use it to keep them following True North,” she looks back up at the night. “But I like it because it’s the only star I could see over all the light in Boston...and New York.” She adds the last part quietly, and he brings his arm behind her neck and around her shoulder, pulling her against him.

He exhales against her cheek and traces his lips up her jaw and down the bridge of her nose. “This is lovely, Swan,” he breathes, and all is silent except for the snapping of ice and the ripple of air through bare trees. “But, why do we have to do this in the middle of a bloody lake? It’s  _freezing_ , love.”

She turns on her side in a rustle of winter clothing and lets a honeyed smile sweep across her mouth, “Well, Captain, I can’t sail, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take you out on the open water.”

It’s his turn to laugh loudly, and he tackles her, feet slipping and sending them sliding and sprawling further across the glassy surface.

\---

An Eastern wind brings in great, billowing storm clouds one day.

“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning!” Henry informs him. And indeed, the scarlet-streaked skies of dawn herald the coming of cold, incessant rain.

By the evening, the torrential rain has not let up, and from the window of the loft, he, Emma and Henry observe gaping puddles and swirling eddies forming on the streets below. And within minutes of sunset, all of the lights in the apartment die suddenly with a sinking groan.

“Games! Mom can we play games?” Henry asks gleefully, while Emma searches through drawers with a flashlight. It’s a new kind of excitement to Killian, who has lived in a world where the darkness was not constantly lit with  _electricity_ , and he’s not sure what has the lad so eager for the lack of technology.

“Sure, kid. Go grab them,” she tells him, and then gives a triumphant hah! when she finds a bag full of candles and matches.

He fumbles through the first candlelit game of “Clue,” but catches on quickly enough.

“It’s not that I am not enjoying the game, lass,” he says. “It’s just, who chooses a candlestick as their weapon of choice?”

Henry hasn’t stopped giggling at his and Emma’s back and forth accusation of each other’s players - and at this point it is clear that neither of them has committed the murder this game so joyously seeks to solve, but both have garnered on to the young lad’s obvious delight in their banter.

“Want to find out how effective a candlestick is?” she teases. “Keep moving Miss Scarlet back to the kitchen and I’d be show you, pirate.”

“Ohhhh,” Henry eggs her on.

This, having a family, it’s just as strange as  _electric toothbrushes_ and  _toaster ovens_  and  _escalators_  to him. It’s wonderful and clunky and painful, and he wants more than anything to understand it, but he’s found no means of easy navigation.

“I think I will have to pass on your offer,” he tells her. “However, I would like to see if Mr. Green has committed this heinous deed with the lead pipe - a bulky, but much more effective tool, I might add - in the Ballroom.”

“Awww maaan,” Henry groans, but grinningly moves his game piece to the desired location.

Emma looks at him from behind her cards, cheeks flushed and her entire being radiating affection.

\---

He trails a familiar path South, from the place where her collar bones form a dip, between the gentle slopes of her breasts, skimming the place just below her ribs, and down the soft slope of her stomach to her navel. The sound that she makes echos off the walls of the room and lands all about him, and it feels like their own universe.

On days (or nights or mornings) like this, when words aren’t enough to fill the tiny fissures permanently etched into both of them, they don’t talk, and he doesn’t mind; this is enough - is often more than enough.

Today, he is lost in the shapes and the lines that she makes when she arches up, mapping the peaks and valleys of her spine, raking his fingers through the tangled forests of her hair.

When he sinks into her, he feels grounded and home, and the universe has shifted and adjusted its pull and now they are its center. He moves languidly in the dying hours of day that dance across her parted lips and tightly closed eyes. The tips of her fingers trace rivers and streams across his shoulders as she rises to meet him and digs her heels firmly into his thighs.

Sometimes, as the pressure builds low and her keening grows louder, he imagines the world is shaking beneath them; that the gentle clack-clack-clack of the headboard against the wall is falling hail, and the world is ending except for them.

Her final, frantic cry as she tightens around him and grips him desperately is the creation of new worlds, and the old world that was so cruel and lost to them has been made anew. This is theirs, and it is imperfect and beautiful.

\---

They’re headed West in her small, yellow vehicle. It’s hotter than hell, and the windows are down. He’d been reluctant to shed his leathers, but even in the soft cotton shirt and denim trousers she’s given him, he can feel his back sticking to the leather seats.

He watches as hills give way to mountains and peaks flatten into plains, and he listens to the quiet hum of Emma, unconsciously following the melody of the music spilling from the front of the car like magic.

She’d woken him at the first gasps of dawn with a gentle shake and hurried press of her lips to his brow. She’d gathered him - along with a stack of curled maps, banded together - and set off, out of a dark and still Storybrooke.

When they’ve reached a steady speed on the open roads, she moves her hand from the numbered knob between the seats to his hand and squeezes lightly. “You okay there?”

He nods, and smiles crookedly at her before looking back out the window. He’d always seen land as a finite realm where boundaries were thickly drawn and all things ended. It had been the sea that was endless crests and unreachable horizons. But here, in this strange  _America_ , the land is immense and consuming, and Swan, his beautiful Swan, knows that he needs to be swallowed whole by adventure.

“Ahh!” she gives an excited shout, and pulls her hand from his, to move the knob back and forward, and then back again, turning into a shining metal establishment with large tractor-trailers sitting out front. She comes to a stop, and pulls the keys from the vehicle, turning a dazzling smile at him. Her eyes glow like she’s unearthed a precious stone.

“Okay, you are going to  _love_  this. America at its finest,” she hurries out of the car to the building, and holds the jingling door open for him as he cautiously saunters in behind her.

A woman with violently scarlet hair and kind, tired eyes, seats them at a booth with sparkling red seats and a cream tabletop. Emma nods enthusiastically when they’re asked if they’ll take coffee, and chipped ceramic mugs are plunked in front of them and immediately filled with the steaming liquid.

He’s busy taking in his surroundings, which are nothing like the inns and taverns of the Enchanted Forest. There’s no sign of the deep woods and dirt floors or tin tankards and warm torches, it’s all bright, shining tile and buzzing pink signs, and it feels so lonely to him. But then both of her hands excitedly grasp his and shake them, and suddenly the light gleaming off of the silver-lined counter is brilliant.

He can’t help but laugh. “I thought we were on this journey to see your land’s Great Canyon.”

“ _Grand_  Canyon,” she corrects lightly, “And we are. This is just what you have to do on a road trip.”

“Have to?” he raises his eyebrows in mocking.

“ _Have to_ ,” she affirms, and then perks up when the red-headed woman returns with a paper and pen.

He’s about to order his customary pancakes - a recently discovered favorite at Granny’s - when Emma cuts in, “We’ll take a whole blueberry pie. And could we have that with whipped cream?”

The woman laughs, a wheezing, painful sounding thing, and pats Emma on the shoulder with a delighted, “You got it, honey.”

“A whole pie, Swan?”

She raises her hands in surrender and he immediately misses the feel of her palms and fingers over his own, “This is a road trip, Killian. I don’t make the rules.”

And when they dig straight into the pie with two forks - gooey, sweet, and warm - he feels as though he is beginning to understand the laws of exploration in this land. She gives a sinful moan as she scoops a whipped cream laden piece of the pastry into her mouth, and perhaps this land isn’t confining, but an unending expansion of limitlessness and wild abandon.

\---

She’s not his whole world, he thinks as he sits across from her at their kitchen table, sipping carefully at the hot chocolate she has prepared them. Her head is bent over a file for work, and she intermittently sighs in frustration.

He still has his brother and Milah and the Jolly and the sea. But, he reasons, she is his True North.

“Hey Swan,” he calls gently.

“Urmph,” she responds.

“I love you,” he tells her lightly.

She waves her hand, “Yeah, yeah, love you, too, pirate.”

He grins when her hand winds across the table and enfolds in his own.

 


End file.
